IT WAS A VERY DIFFERENT AFFAIR TO YOUR regular German press launch. The conference room was more like a nightclub, a heavily Mini-themed space, bold and black as the showrooms would be, and populated by tie-less executives. The car we would soon drive on the roads near Perugia in Umbria, Italy, was even more surprising. As its designer Frank Stephenson later said, the Germans were terrified that they’d mess up and kill a British icon. They didn’t, they knocked it out of the park.
It wasn’t the first retro-inspired car. Volkswagen had already reimagined the Beetle but it wasn’t wildly successful, perhaps because it was cartoonish rather than a cool take on the classic. The Mini looked dynamic and an evolution of the original; you could imagine there being a couple of earlier models, design stepping stones leading to the R50, as the new Mini was known internally.
Refreshingly new yet reassuringly familiar, its design self-confident and fun. It was bejewelled with bespoke details, like the chrome-rimmed lights front and rear, and the large, central speedo and row of rally carstyle toggle switches, another nod to the original. Its wide-track, wheel-at-each-corner stance promised keen dynamics, particularly as it was underpinned by a technically sophisticated chassis: up front it had MacPherson struts like its supermini rivals but at the rear it had a version of the BMW multi-link Z-axle when most rivals had a twist beam or something similarly simple. And yet the Cooper was priced £200 less than its
